Once I grabbed the overall concept of the book as such, it was a pleasant surprise to see such candor from someone of the born-again Christian faith in print. For the author's first book, he's done a fine job and I recommend it. When I got to chapter 10 the book reached its crescendo. The most fallible thing about any institution is of course its people, and sometimes the behavior of our peers can be downright embarrassing. It was refreshing to hear from an insider how difficult things can be for a moderate Christian and to be reminded that there are good and great people struggling with the challenges of all their respective faiths.

Reviewed by
John Cloutman

The issue of secularisation is discussed in various religious traditions. For example, in the secular states like India, it has been argued that the need was to legislate for toleration and respect between quite different religions; whereas the secularisation of the West was a response to intra-Christian tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism. Some have therefore argued that Western secularisation is radically different in that it deals with autonomy from religious regulation and control. Considerations of both tolerance and autonomy are relevant to any secular state.

In the Western world, the separation of state and church is seen as necessary for a truly democratic state system.The churches accept the separation of state and church in general, but see a danger in secularism and their symptoms, mostly in relation to the expected loss of values. But do we have less values as a nonreligious person?

The future ability of value conceptions cannot be left to a godlike authority or one single culture or tradition, but belong to a century lasting fights related to enlightment and humanism against already exisiting and authoritarian state system. In such situations, the dignity and autonomy of each human individual and its most possible freedom are realized through democracy, constitutional state systems, a global citizenship and human rights and can be seen as a garantee of the value consence. In other words, secularisation argues that individuals increasingly look outside of religion for authoritative positions.

Nepal was marked through separations and fights along the maoistic people´s war, through boycotts during election periods and murderers. It is a fight, a way of tears and violence,of power and ups and downs between authoritian legislative power and maoistic rebellion. The first unfinished tries of 1990 for the urgent social, political and economical change seem to get realized now after a long battle. But some months later, dissatisfaction and frustration are again setting into the expectations. Again, politicians have started to follow their own traditional interests and thrown away all claims due to the survival of the society. But the civil society wont allow this to happen!

With this youth conference, IHEYO, as a civil society, wants to offer a platform for further discourse by inviting young people to strengthen their opinions about secular values while discussing possibilities and realisations in common ways. These discussions should at least lead to an integrated education of human rights and to a strict neutrality of states to religions and other orientations.

As youngsters, we are believing in our will power, in our strength to influence, to give motivation to people in Nepal working day by day for a better democratic and secular system, and finally to give support to our Asian friends.
So, back to the question I asked earlier: 'Can Secularism Save Ailing Religious Nations?'. My answer is no, but it is a step into the right direction.

Silvana Uhlrich,
President IHEYO

The clergy made their stand recently at the closure of a four-day conference on "The global race to save lives from HIV and AIDS" at Colline Hotel, Mukono, Uganda. The Rt. Rev. Wilson Mutebi said: "HIV/AIDS has continued to devastate our societies even as we preach abstinence and loyalty; it is time we advised those who cannot abstain to use condoms."

Mutebi, who was the chairman of the working group on Faith, Stigma, Shame, Denial, Discrimination, Inaction and Mis-action (SSDDIM) at the conference, observed that infecting others with HIV/AIDS is like committing murder and adultery before God. He, however, said the use of condoms may reduce the two sins of adultery and murder to only adultery if the condom is used well and HIV is not passed on to others.

Most of the religious sects are opposed to the use of condom in the prevention of HIV on grounds that it promotes adultery.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200908311449.html

Most genes have deep histories, with ancestors that reach down into the tree of life, sometimes all the way back to bacteria. The gradual increase from the few thousand genes in a bacterium to the tens of thousands of genes in a person came primarily through genome- and gene-duplication events, which created extra sets of genes free to evolve new sequences and new functions. Much of this duplication happened long before humans evolved, though some duplications occurred in the human lineage to create exclusively human twins of existing genes.

But in 2006, geneticists showed for the first time that they could identify truly novel genes. In fruit flies, they came across five young genes that were derived from "noncoding" DNA between existing genes and not from preexisting genes. As a result, other researchers started looking for novel genes in other species.

Meanwhile, while looking for gene duplications in humans, geneticists Aoife McLysaght and David Knowles of Trinity College Dublin kept coming across genes that seemed to have no counterparts in other primates, suggesting that new genes arose in us as well. To determine which of these genes with no counterparts were de novo genes, McLysaght and Knowles first used a computer to compare the human, chimp, and other genomes. They eliminated all but three of the 644 candidates because their sequence in the database was not complete--or they had equivalents in other species.

Next, they searched the chimp genome for signs of each gene's birth. "We strove hard to identify the noncoding DNA that gave rise to the gene," McLysaght says. Only by finding that DNA could they be sure that the gene wasn't already present in the chimp genome but was somehow unrecognizable to gene-finding programs. At three locations where the chimp and human genomes were almost identical, telltale mutations indicated that it was impossible to get a viable protein from the chimp DNA sequence.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/901/2

Contact Details:
C/o Ibadan University Humanist Society
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan
Ibadan
Oyo State
Nigeria
E-mail: office@unibadan.humanists.net

He was like most Islamic Philosophers, also a jurist, a man of letters and a scientist. He lived in Cordoba for some time, and also shuttled between Cordoba and Marakesh. This was one Islamic Cultural Formation was one single, open area. Open for ideas, philosophy, people, merchants, travel, etc. until the First World War i.e. only 80 years ago. No visa was required to go from country to country. There were no boundaries until recently. Ibn Rushd was introduced to the court of Muagida Mugavid, the Sultan, who was impressed by his Philosophy. He was appointed a judge and was very close to the court. Later fell out of favor.

According to Ibn Rushd, there is no conflict between religion and philosophy, rather that they are different ways of reaching the same truth. He believed in the eternity of the universe. He also held that the soul is divided into two parts, one individual and one divine; while the individual soul is not eternal, all humans at the basic level share one and the same divine soul.

Ibn Rushd has two kinds of Knowledge of Truth. The first being his knowledge of truth of religion being based in faith and thus could not be tested, nor did it require training to understand. The second knowledge of truth is philosophy, which was reserved for an elite few who had the intellectual capacity to undertake this study.

What a great contribution to church-state separation!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes

According to AA, the "2006 law... blatantly mixes church and state, in defiance of the US Constitution."  The law they speak of requires that the executive director of Kentucky's Homeland Security shall "[p]ublicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth by including the provisions of KRS 39A.285(3) in its agency training and educational materials. The executive director shall also be responsible for prominently displaying a permanent plaque at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3)."

KRS 39A.285(3) states, in part that "[t]he safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln's historic March 30, 1863, Presidential Proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy's November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: 'For as was written long ago: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."'"

This was seen as a blatant violation of the Constitution by AA, as well as many American. And now, a judge has agreed - even though the State maintained that they were justified in their action because for more than 200 years our Government has "acknowledged the role of religion in the American way of life." They further contended that were the court to side with the plaintiffs, "...it could lead to a wholly secular society completely divorced from religion, unavoidably causing harm to the American society."

According to an Associated Press report, Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate said in his decision rules that the laws were "akin to establishing a religion," which is unconstitutional.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2044-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m8d30-Atheists-victorious--Judge-orders-God-out-of-Kentucky

The medical practitioner's daughter, Flora Swire, was one of the passengers aboard the doomed Pan Am flight 103 on 21 December 1988.

Abdelbaset Ali al Megrah Megrahi was the only person convicted for the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people in the air and on the ground, in the Scottish town of Lockerbie. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2001. The Rev. David Fergusson, an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland and a professor of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, told Ecumenical News International, "I have no argument about compassion, but I do think that the way the government of Scotland handled this could have been better." He added, "Many people believe that the manner in which it was done gave the impression of an acquittal rather than a release. It might have been the wrong course of action but was obviously a very tight call for the minister [of justice]. The tumultuous reception he received in Libya should have been anticipated."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200909010917.html

According to amendments added in the 1980s, “Use of derogatory remarks, etc; in respect of the Holy Prophet; whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”

Pakistan Christian Congress (PCC), a political party launched by Pakistani Christians, has blamed the 1986 blasphemy law for the violence against the Christian community. “On several occasions, on the pretext of blasphemy, Christians have been attacked, pastors and priests arrested, women raped and homes burnt," PCC has said.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20090829/pakistani-christians-give-gov-t-ultimatum-on-blasphemy-laws/index.html

The Italian Bishops Conference said Benedict had spoken by telephone with its president, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, to discuss the "current situation." Benedict expressed to Bagnasco "his esteem, gratitude and appreciation," the Bishops Conference said in a statement. Vatican officials confirmed the phone call but would not elaborate. Bagnasco and other top church officials have been defending a Catholic editor who was attacked by a Berlusconi family newspaper after demanding that the premier answer allegations over his purported relationships with young women. Il Giornale, which is owned by the premier's brother Paolo, on Friday alleged that the chief editor of the Avvenire daily had a homosexual scandal in his past.

The paper alleged that Dino Boffo had been fined several years ago for harassing the wife of a man in whom he was purportedly interested. Boffo has denied the allegations.The Bishops Conference, which owns Avvenire, staunchly defended Boffo, and Bagnasco called the allegations "disgusting." Berlusconi quickly distanced himself from Il Giornale's claim, but the incident damaged the premier's church ties, already frayed by the scandal.

Support from Catholic voters is considered crucial for any Italian government to come to power, and good ties with the Vatican are courted by many politicians.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090901/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_pope_berlusconi

To defuse this potentially explosive situation, the French education ministry has appointed a special official to mediate between the Muslims and the local education authorities. The press have nicknamed this official "Madame Foulard" — Mrs. Headscarf. Meanwhile in the northeastern industrial city of Lille, a group of parents and businessmen, following the long established practice of French Catholics and Orthodox Jews, confronted with the determinedly secularist nature of French state education, have set up the first Muslim secondary school in France. The students' parents each pay just under $1,000 a year; the main funding comes from the businessmen. In short, Muslims-like other religious believers in France, where there are no tax rebates for education — will soon be paying twice for their children's education: paying directly out-of-pocket for the schooling that their children actually receive, and indirectly through taxes for an education they prefer not to have.

However, this tax treatment was not the subject that attracted my attention and set me thinking as I read this report. It was, rather, a remark by the young Muslim administrator of the school, when he was interviewed by the press. "Secularism," he said, "has become a new religion." Indeed it has, and in a sense it always was. But why has it taken a young Muslim to notice it? Perhaps because, although now a French citizen, he is still able to look at Western civilization from outside, and therefore see certain things more objectively.

If most Westerners remain blind to what was all but self-evident to this young cultural "outsider," it is no doubt because they are committed to the idea of the non-confessional state, and fail to see how it differs from a secularist state.

Apostolic atheism

A non-confessional state is one in which no religious belief is given precedence over any other. The government refrains from favoring or imposing one particular world view, and, without being dogmatic about it, tries insofar as is possible to treat different religious communities evenhandedly. This presumably is what the majority of the American founding fathers had in mind. Whether a non-confessional state can or should treat different codes of behavior impartially is a separate question. You can hardly have a nation or state with a plurality of codes of behavior — not at least about fundamentals and if that is the case, where are the basic precepts of such a national code to come from? This is a problem that the American founding fathers do not seem to have considered. It probably never occurred to them that any considerable body of citizens would one day question the truth of the natural law as formulated in the Ten Commandments.

A secularist state, on the other hand, is one in which religion as such — the notion or even mention of God — is as far as possible excluded from public life, public affairs, and public documents — with the purpose of eventually making godlessness, coupled with a humanistic adulation of man and his achievements, the reigning belief of the majority of citizens. Such was the aim of anti-clerical French governments from 1870 to 1914. A high proportion of the republican politicians of that era were, in their own peculiar way, as apostolically atheist as Marx and Lenin; their teacher-training colleges were like seminaries, formed for the production of dedicated young apostles of unbelief, and a similar mindset apparently continues to permeate the thinking of an influential part of contemporary French officialdom. Hence the whole fuss about headscarves.

Atheism of this sort, which is a peculiarly modern phenomenon, deserves to be classified as a religion — at least from a governmental and legal perspective because it promotes its own fully formed view of the origin and meaning of life, offers its own form of salvation, and is zealously missionary and illiberal toward other world views or belief systems. In the rapidly approaching secularized European states (or pan-European state, governed from Brussels or elsewhere), atheism of this breed could become as much a state religion as it was in the Soviet Union — even if it is applied with more polish and less brutality.

Equal mistreatment

Returning to the non-confessional state, one might ask: Were the American founding fathers being inconsistent when, in establishing equal treatment (at least in theory) for all religious denominations, they allowed references to God and the natural law in their Declaration of Independence and their Constitution? I would say No, because belief in a Creator, in the natural law, and in a moral conscience are not matters of faith. They are logical inferences based on the evidence, and as such are acts of reason within all men's reach. This is at least implicitly recognized in the Vatican II document on religious liberty.

Atheism is, by comparison, an act of unreason. It is much more reasonable to believe that the universe with all its complex structures is the work of a Mighty Intelligence than that it generated itself by accident and sustains itself without cause. This obviously does not mean that atheists are all unintelligent. There are many reasons why people become atheists. Vatican II gives as one of them the bad example of believers; that is a melancholy truth. However, it no more constitutes an argument against belief than the evidence of bad lawyers is an argument against having laws, or people to administer them. The problem of evil is another major stumbling block. But whatever the grounds for unbelief, it is a matter of self-deception, or else of faith in human thinkers like Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud.

All this being the case, if devout little secularists and their parents feel intimidated or provoked by references to God and to religion in public places one can see no reason why in a genuinely non confessional (rather than secularist) state, religious believers should not enjoy an equal right to feel intimidated and provoked by God's exclusion.

The rapid transformation of traditional Anglo-Saxon liberalism and non-confessionalism — with its well-intentioned attempts to be genuinely fair to everyone in religion as in everything else — into dogmatic French-style secularism, bent on establishing godlessness as the dominant and privileged world view, seems to me the most significant development of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It is not perhaps as noticeable in the United States as in Europe, where there is no strong "Religious Right" to make politicians and seculists cautious about what they say or do. However in Europe we see small and large signs of the accelerating change every week, even every day.

The most notable illustration of this change has been the recently drafted constitution for a federal Europe, drawn up under the chairmanship of former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, which excludes any mention of Christianity as a formative influence on European culture, attributing everything good in that culture to the Greeks and Romans or the 18th century Enlightenment. What we are hearing in this preposterous document, I would say, can legitimately be called secularist fundamentalism, even secularist fanaticism.

Philip Trower, a veteran English Catholic journalist, is the author of Turmoil and Truth: the Historical Roots of the Modern Crisis in the Catholic Church (Ignatius, 2003).

This article first appeared in the March 2004 issue of Catholic World Report.

Copyright © Catholic World Report 2004

Version: 3rd April 2004
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/trower/secularism.htm

At last someone has said it. At least as far as I know, it's the first time it's been said in a major English newspaper. On September 20 of last year, the Daily Telegraph — England's largest quality national daily — carried an article about the problems the French government is having with some of its Muslims. "At the start of the school year," the report ran, "several Muslim girls nationwide were suspended or expelled for arriving at schools with their heads covered." In most French state schools this is forbidden. The French educational authorities see the wearing of headscarves by Muslim girls in state schools as a statement of religious belief, which — in the words of the relevant government document — would "constitute an act of intimidation, provocation, proselytizing, or propaganda."

To defuse this potentially explosive situation, the French education ministry has appointed a special official to mediate between the Muslims and the local education authorities. The press have nicknamed this official "Madame Foulard" — Mrs. Headscarf.

The American president, who refers to the will of God to justify each of his political decisions, declares unequivocably that he welcomes "faith to help solve the nation's deepest problems." This is not the banal opportunism of a politician seeking to increase his popular appeal: George W. Bush, a confirmed fundamentalist, really thinks that God is with him, and hence with the United States. Several commentators remarked on Bush's exaggerated piety following the September 11th attacks when he launched his "crusade against the axis of evil". But in fact he originally arrived in the political arena claiming, like Claude Ryan, to be invested with a divine mission: "I came to the White House," declared Bush, "because I found faith. I found God. I am here because of the power of prayer." And George W. Bush prays, as he himself says, in order to thank "a generous, all-powerful God", the same God who commands him to maintain the death penalty and to oppose the right to abortion.

This thought process, whether it be motivated by Christian, Muslim, Jewish or other faith, can only exacerbate political tensions when it becomes the reference frame in which a head of state bases his analyses and formulates his decisions. When that head of state is the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, economically, politically and militarily, and when he justifies his actions not on the basis of rational policy but rather religious fervour, then there is good reason to be worried. The convergence of religious fundamentalism, politics and military might is the perfect recipe for fanaticism which runs the risk of leading to fascism. In a recent book, the economist Rodrigue Tremblay advances the idea that the United States, if it continues on its current path, is in danger of becoming to the 21st century what Germany was to the 20th. Wake up brothers and sisters!

A truly secular state distances itself completely from all that is religious, but does so without opposing religion. In this respect, Canada--a monarchy whose constitution recognizes the supremacy of God and whose head of state is also the head of a church--displays paradoxically a tradition and a political culture which are decidedly more secular that those of its republican neighbour.

But if religious fundamentalism can so easily insinuate itself into the halls of power of a democratic republic, then there is every reason to fear that the same could happen in a monarchy founded on the recognition of the supremacy of God. Just imagine what could ensue if the Alliance Party came to power. In order to prevent the slide into religious fanaticism, it is urgent that Canada, and Quebec in the context of sovereignty, adopt a declaration of state secularism as exemplified by French and Mexican models.

Secularism in its truest form is indeed much more than a mere separation of religions from the state. Secularism is the republican ideal embodied in the protection of fundamental human rights. All charters which recognize liberty of conscience and equality of individuals, without discrimination based on sex, race or religion, are expressions of the quintessence of secularism.

Secularism is in fact an expression of humanism

Of course, the secularism of the state cannot in and of itself prevent wars and is not a sufficient condition for democracy; the example of certain totalitarian regimes reminds us of that fact. Nevertheless, it is a necessary condition for peace among individuals, among groups, and among nations. Secularism promotes the lessening of tensions and encourages political realism rather than religious fanaticism. Today's world is in great need of it.

Daniel Baril was vice-president of the Mouvement laïque québécois (MLQ, Quebec Secular Movement) when this article was written in 2003.
http://atheisme.ca/repertoire/baril_daniel/laicite_humanisme_en.html

http://forums.canadiancontent.net/spirituality-philosophy/81327-atheist-jokes.html

"for blindfolding many from daily realities of life, for bearing so mUch grudges against critical inquiry; for waging an open and secret war against science; for corrupting the youths with indoctrination; for deceiving people with hope of heaven and lake of fire that do not exist; for being intolerant of opposing views and lastly, for your inability to control those that sheepishly follow you,  Mr or Ms (or whatever designation you  prefer) Religion,I WANT YOU DEAD"

Yep! If you would like to know, I truly wanted religion dead at the time.
Unfortunately, the editor considered the piece too harsh; appreciated it but never published it. That was six years ago. But having been schooled in the true tenets of humanism in the last half a decade, I have come to realise that the the verdict of the indictment/miniature charge sheet should have been: YOU ARE HEREBY BANISHED FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN and RESTRICTED, ONLY AND ONLY, TO PRIVATE AFFAIRS!
That is the spirit of secularism that many humanist will gladly embrace today: a clear-cut separation of the state from the church, an expulsion of the Holy See from the United Nations, a fight against an imposition of Shari'ah anywhere, an absolute tolerance and co-existence of atheistic and theistic views in the global space. And that, to me, is secularism!

Happy reading!

Yemi Ademowo Johnson
Editor